How I Met Your Mother: All Halloween And Thanksgiving Episodes Ranked Worst To Best

8. The Rebound Girl

The Rebound Girl is the last Thanksgiving episode of the series. It's thankfully not the last holiday episode altogether, because it would be about the worst possible way to go out.

Bookended by two of the series' most emotional moments (Barney's heartbreak in Tick Tick Tick and Robin's infertility reveal in Symphony of Illumination), this episode treats both characters' current emotional states as cheap punchlines. Barney mockingly laughing and pointing at his own niece doesn't mesh with his characterization at the top of the episode, and Robin's childishness throughout appears so unmotivated that it makes her pregnancy reveal feel cheap and inorganic.

With such emotional episodes on either side of it, there's a chance The Rebound Girl is intentionally shallow to avoid depressing viewers straight through Thanksgiving. That's actually a valid decision, and the premise of Ted and Barney adopting a baby does feel like a promising setup. Unfortunately, we mostly just get a lot of jokes about Barney being a terrible father, with occasional cutaways to Robin breaking a lamp and screaming.

On the plus side, the few emotional moments we do get with the characters are touching, and at least some jokes land well enough. Wayne Brady's delivery of the episode's moral lesson and Ernie Hudson's cameo in Marshall's Ghostbusters flashback are both excellent moments in an otherwise regrettable episode.